National Farm Viability Conference: Full Schedule

1:30pm MDT

Supporting Farmers Through Stress and Change: Practical Relational Tools for Advisors

Tuesday September 22, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm MDT

This workshop explores the role of business and technical assistance providers not only as advisors and problem solvers, but also as sources of grounding, connection, and community for farmers navigating stress and uncertainty. Designed as a peer to peer learning experience, the session equips advisors with practical relational skills to support farmers during difficult moments. We will draw from the field of interpersonal neurobiology to understand how stress affects communication. Participants will learn how the left hemisphere drives task oriented thinking, while the right hemisphere supports relational presence. High stakes situations often push both farmers and advisors into left brain functioning, reducing our ability to connect. By understanding basic brain science, advisors can intentionally shift into language and behaviors that activate the relational circuitry associated with warmth, curiosity, and emotional attunement—helping farmers feel accompanied rather than alone. Participants will learn: • How different types of language activate different neural networks • Why some conversations soothe while others strain • How to shift from task oriented mindset into relational presence • How to use these skills to create safety, resonance, and connection during stressful conversations We will practice applying these tools to scenarios involving farmer stress, change, fear, and loss. Participants will leave with new perspectives on working with stress and concrete skills they can use immediately in the field.

Speakers

Claudia Kenny

Agricultural Farm Land Access and Transfer Senior Specialist, American Farmland Trust

Claudia Kenny brings the skills of a conflict specialist, the grounded experience of a long time farmer, and a deep commitment to a just, community rooted food system to her work with the Farms for a New Generation team at American Farmland Trust. As part of a first generation farm... Read More →

Tuesday September 22, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm MDT
Alvarado G

Other

3:30pm MDT

Small Farm Viability Reality Through Case Studies

Tuesday September 22, 2026 3:30pm - 5:00pm MDT

Alvarado G

Small farms struggle with financial viability and livelihood satisfaction. Are you working with farmers and still wondering, how do small farms really make it work? This session will take a case study approach to showing how small farms find success, as defined by their own goals. Organizations providing business advising will share client case studies of clients who found both financial success and livelihood satisfaction.

Panelist business advisors will share the following, as relevant to each case: the farm client’s story; goals and how they reached them; what was attenable/not attainable; are they profitable; what support or intervention was required; how does the client now define success; what are they working towards next? What are the particular family, enterprise, geographic, or resource contexts important to this client’s story, goals and success?

Learning Objectives:
1. Learn diverse ways small farms find and define success
2. Learn how business advising and attention to farm financials was a part of the path to viability for each farm
3. Gain exposure to how different programs support farmers to find viability, and interventions that can keep farmers on track, reduce risk, and avoid business failure

Audience:
Beginner/Generalist/Policy maker – people who work with farms in some capacity but don’t look at farm financials every day and want to understand more about
how small farms make it work, and what the financial reality through a story (not wonky spreadsheet) approach.

Speakers

Megan Hunter

Senior Program Specialist, Transfarmation

Jeff Cole

Client Services, The Carrot Project

Christina Lynch

Chief Financial Officer, Potlikker Capital, Inc.

I am a management accounting leader and fractional CFO who helps mission-driven organizations strengthen financial systems, manage capital, and make informed decisions that support long-term sustainability. At Potlikker Capital, I bring a financial strategy lens to advancing equitable... Read More →

Ellen Polishuk

Owner/Consultant, Plant to Profit

Ellen Polishuk Ellen Polishuk is a small farm consultant and business advisor. She leverages her 35 years of biological vegetable farming experience to help growers around the country to achieve more satisfaction and better profitability from their farm businesses. Her client work... Read More →

Tuesday September 22, 2026 3:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
Alvarado G

Business Planning and Development

9:00am MDT

Navigating the Complex Emotional, Social, and Financial Issues of Working with Farmers in Distress

Wednesday September 23, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am MDT

Alvarado G

Sam Smith of the Intervale Center and Michael Robertson of Cornell University NY FarmNet are proposing a session to explore the process of working with distressed borrowers. Farmers in distress are making difficult decisions under pressure with interconnected personal, financial, and family systems that all need attention. The presenters will discuss the processes they use to work directly with farmers who are experiencing distress and present examples of different farm scenarios and outcomes. The goal of the workshop is to introduce strategies for working with farmers in distress and build the confidence and skills of attendees to work with these farms. The session will touch on the following topics: Initial assessment including financial, emotional and relational readiness. Readiness determines the work and there are different entry points for clients Service provider strategies for approaching difficult conversations. The term 'soft skills' is misleading – these skills are the core intervention and there are specific teachable competencies. Collecting financial and production data to develop potential scenarios. Working with partners: lenders, attorneys, CPAs, mediation, mental health. Introducing challenging concepts (bankruptcy, sale of assets including the farm) Creating a viable plan with support for implementation Outcomes are driven as much by human systems as by financial conditions. Most cases do not result in full turnaround, disengagement is common (though they often return later), and the emotional and relational barriers > technical barriers.

Speakers

Sam Smith

Farm Business Director, Intervale Center

Sam Smith is the Farm Business Director at the Intervale Center. He has background in livestock and vegetable farming, and a MBA in Sustainability from Antioch New England. He works with throughout Vermont to improve farm viability and develop the next generation of farm and food... Read More →

Michael Robertson

NY FarmNet and/or Shelterbelt Advisors

Michael Robertson is the Farm Business Management Specialist at NY FarmNet. He also runs Shelterbelt Advisors, a small investment advisory and tax preparation firm that serves farmers. He lives in the Hudson Valley of New York on a sheep farm.

Wednesday September 23, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am MDT
Alvarado G

Business Planning and Development, Farm Financial Management

11:00am MDT

Navigating Farm Financial Stress: Tools, Decisions, and Knowing Your Tipping Point

Wednesday September 23, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm MDT

Alvarado G

Farming has never been easy, and when the agricultural economy takes a hit, survival can come down to a few critical decision points. This interactive workshop shares practical financial tools to assess a producer's operation honestly and respond strategically; from building and analyzing key financial statements to understanding solvency, managing capital, and knowing what information lenders want to see. This session will also assess available options when financial pressure is mounting and cash is tight. Most importantly, we'll tackle a question many farmers are afraid to ask: At what point do you consider an exit strategy? Understanding one's tipping point isn't giving up, it's part of a thorough decision-making process. Participants will leave prepared to work with producers to evaluate their situations clearly and help them make informed choices on their own terms.

Speakers

Paul Dietmann

Vice President, New Markets, Compeer

Paul is a Vice President of New Markets at Compeer Financial. He and his wife Julie live in Prairie du Sac, WI with their daughter and two sons. His primary role at Compeer is to provide loans and other assistance to emerging market farmers in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois... Read More →

Chris Laughton

Director of Knowledge Exchange, Farm Credit East

Chris Laughton is the Director of Knowledge Exchange at Farm Credit East. He coordinates Farm Credit East's customer education and beginning farmer programs. He holds a bachelor's degree in horticulture from Cornell University, an MBA from the University of Massachusetts, and a Master... Read More →

Wednesday September 23, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm MDT
Alvarado G

Farm Financial Management

8:00am MDT

Developing a Marketing Strategy with Farm and Food Businesses

Thursday September 24, 2026 8:00am - 9:30am MDT

Alvarado G

Rose Wilson of Rose Wilson Consulting with Sara Armstrong Donegan and Christine Porcaro of the Intervale Center are proposing this session on how to develop a marketing strategy with farm and food business owners. Through the lens of farm business goal setting, we will walk participants through how to work with farmers to develop core competencies around market research and demand, to test assumptions, to use sales goals to define approaches, to create easy to measure metrics, and to gather that information to build a coherent marketing strategy. Throughout the session, participants will learn a clear framework for building a farm marketing strategy and practice guiding farmers through market research and assumptions testing, translate farm business goals to actionable marketing tactics, identify easily measurable metrics tied to sales goals, and familiarize themselves with existing tools to facilitate this process with farmers in their own work. The session will reinforce how the process does not end with creating the plan, step two is implementing and step three is following up to review and analyze actuals to assumptions, and update the plan for the new year.

Speakers

Rose Wilson

Principal, Rose Wilson Consulting LLC

Over the past 22 years, Rose Wilson has helped more than 500 farms and food producers with business launch, expansion, and exit; enterprise analysis; market development; and grant writing/capital raise. Rose brings a broad set of technical and people skills to each client and project... Read More →

Christine Porcaro

Farm Business Specialist, Intervale Center

Christine Porcaro is a Farm Business Specialist at the Intervale, where she supports farm and food businesses in strengthening their marketing, sales, and overall business management. She previously served as a co-owner and Marketing & Sales Manager at Fat Toad Farm, working with... Read More →

Sara Armstrong Donegan

Farm Business Specialist, Intervale Center

Sara Armstrong Donegan has been working as a farm business consultant with the Intervale Center for over six years. She works with farmers across Vermont with a focus on business planning, financials, and marketing. Sara also owns a diversified vegetable farm with her husband, Trillium... Read More →

Thursday September 24, 2026 8:00am - 9:30am MDT
Alvarado G

Food and Farm Marketing and Distribution, Business Planning and Development

10:00am MDT

Case Management Approach for Farm Viability

Thursday September 24, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am MDT

Alvarado G

WORKSHOP OVERVIEW We are proposing an interactive workshop that explores using case management and farmer training program design and evaluation strategies to assess farm viability — particularly for beginning farmers. We will share Viva Farms' experience developing and implementing a case management framework for farmer support, adopting and iterating Salesforce CRM to track farmer progress over time, and identifying meaningful metrics for program management and evaluation. We will structure the session as part lecture, part group discussion. After sharing about Viva Farms' work, we will facilitate a group discussion on the themes of case management, program design, and evaluating farm viability. We encourage attendees to come ready to share their experience with case management, farm viability program design, and evaluation metrics. Ultimately, we envision this session as a hybrid of a workshop and a roundtable discussion. We have a lot to share but we also have a lot to learn. We are not experts in case management or farm viability program design and evaluation. Therefore, we want to offer Viva Farms' experience as a case study on these themes that serves as a jumping-off point for a group discussion with other practitioners who bring their own experience and are grappling with similar questions. LEARNING OBJECTIVES We hope to offer attendees new perspectives on the value of using a case management approach to support farmers as they pursue farm viability. In addition, we will offer examples of the farm viability metrics and frameworks we have identified, and will create space in the session for others to share examples from their own work.

Speakers

Anna Chotzen

Director of Farm Viability, Viva Farms

Anna has nearly 15 years of experience supporting beginning and immigrant farmers to build thriving farm businesses. As Viva Farms' Director of Farm Viability, she leads the organization's land access, capital access, and business management programs. She works closely with capital... Read More →

Rob Smith

Chief Programs and Operations Officer, Viva Farms

Rob has over 20 years of experience working at the intersection of sustainable agriculture, farm business management, and social advocacy. Prior to joining Viva Farms in 2014, he worked as a manager of Happy Boy Farms, a 400-acre, certified organic farm in California's central coast... Read More →

Micah Anderson

Director of Programs, King County, Viva Farms

Micah has spent the past 15 years teaching experiential, hands-on sustainable agriculture courses and has facilitated many participatory workshops, in multiple languages and cultures. His work focuses on bridging and strengthening diverse communities through programs that foster a... Read More →

Thursday September 24, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am MDT
Alvarado G

Program Design Development Management and Funding